Here's a fun graph of Major League Baseball team victories (vertical axis) plotted as a function of opening day payrolls (horizontal). I was surprised to find an upward sloping relationship with as much statistical significance as there is, although here not enough to pass the standard test of a 95% confidence bound. There are plenty of reasons to quibble with this graph, not least of which being that opening day payrolls change a lot as the season play out, but I thought it was fun. No wonder the Yankees would like to get under the luxury tax threshold!

Janet Yellen to be nominated for Fed chair

Here's a fun timeline of Janet Yellen's life and career in the New York Times today. The high school yearbook photo is fun! I was fortunate enough to work at the CEA in 1998 and 1999 when she headed it, which is about a third of the way down the page. But I think by the time I got there, President Clinton had white hair!

Wilentz on the 14th Amendment

The eminent Sean Wilentz of Princeton wrote an op-ed in defense of presidential power to pay U.S. debts under the 14th Amendment. It's hard to quibble with his interpretation of historical events and the intent of Section 4 about the "validity" of the public debt. But his description of the 1860s controversy over paying debts in "depreciated paper money, or 'greenbacks'" was striking in light of the history of financial crises and defaults recently popularized by Reinhart and Rogoff. I think they would say that the U.S. has indeed "defaulted" on debts by repaying in inflation-debased currency, probably most notably by going off the gold standard during the Great Depression. One would have to agree that simply not paying debts is a lot more like unconstitutionally "questioning" them than inflating them away, but it seems there is some leeway in interpretation.

Two NYT pieces on immigration

Today one article covers Turkish and other immigrant groups in Dayton, OH, that community's efforts to attract immigrants in order to restore economic vitality, and some of the controversies. Also today, an editorial recounts California Gov. Jerry Brown's signing a bill to grant driver licenses to undocumented immigrants and describes it as a grassroots fix to challenges posed by immigration.

It certainly is striking how, as the editorial points out, the California Republican Party (i.e., consisting of the state office holders) appears either to have no Tea Party contingent or one that is differently focused than the national group. Left unsaid here is how another arguably grassroots immigration reform in neighboring Arizona led to a very different kind of legislation there, one that was partially struck down by the Supreme Court.

Mulligan on trends in implicit tax rates

Here's an op-ed by Casey Mulligan in the Wall St. Journal with a startling graphic (thank to Greg Mankiw's blog for the cite). It also appears as Figure 2 in Mulligan's recent NBER working paper. It shows increases of about 8 percentage points in the marginal tax rate on earnings by median earners associated with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act policies, and increases of about 4.5 percentage points associated with the Affordable Care Act, around a base rate of 40% before the recession.

It would appear the marginal tax rate is strongly affected by unemployment insurance.

(geo)Graphical look at the uninsured in America

Today the NY Times reports about Americans without health insurance, and they've provided a very helpful set of graphics showing where they live and who they are, which is here. The failure to convince states with large poor populations to acquiesce to the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare looms large.

New book on NFL and concussions

ESPN's Outside the Lines reports on a new book relaying the sad history of brain trauma studies and the NFL and mentions stuff that sounds like pretty clear conflicts of interest in publishing, along with some patterns of complete denial by league officials, in 20/20 hindsight. Notable also was a brief recounting of a meeting attended by NFL officials and a representative from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

The book, League of Denial, appears to be associated (or is the same as) the PBS Frontline project that originally was a collaboration with ESPN.